Bug Description

TEST CASE: Run a netboot installation with apt-setup/proposed=true. Watch 'ls -l /target/sbin/start-stop-daemon* /target/sbin/initctl*' after the base system is installed and ensure that there's no period when both start-stop-daemon and start-stop-daemon.REAL (similarly initctl and initctl.REAL) are non-fake versions - you can tell by the size - and that if there's an update available for dpkg or upstart that the timestamp of the relevant binaries get updated. In the hardy case, don't worry about initctl, and dpkg probably won't be upgraded but it's still worth checking that start-stop-daemon is diverted correctly.

Regression potential: Checking whether installs with apt-setup/proposed=true work should be sufficient.

Original report follows:

The SRU verification for bug #771372 in maverick has revealed that debian-installer's chroot setup handling when installing/upgrading packages at install time is different than the chroot setup used by debootstrap. When initially bootstrapping a maverick system, the postinst script of the maverick procps package has its call to 'start' successfully intercepted; however, when *upgrading* the procps package after debootstrap, the start call is not intercepted, resulting in install failures.

Since this is impossible to fix in the maverick installer post-release, I'll backport the fix for bug #602896 in a subsequent procps SRU; but investigation is needed here to find out why d-i isn't handling initctl correctly and make sure this is properly resolved for precise.

chroot-setup.sh does indeed move aside /sbin/initctl. However, it doesn't divert it! Therefore, if upstart is upgraded, it will put a real initctl back. In this case, upstart is upgraded before procps, hence the bug.

Alarmingly, this means that in such cases the resulting system will end up with an upgraded version of upstart according to dpkg but will in fact have an old initctl binary, because d-i will have saved initctl from the start of its internal upgrade process and then put it back at the end. Therefore, we need to fix this bug rather urgently for all supported releases.

Accepted debian-installer-utils into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Accepted debian-installer-utils into oneiric-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Accepted debian-installer-utils into hardy-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Accepted debian-installer-utils into natty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Jean-Baptiste, can you also confirm that, as part of the base server install, an upgraded version of the upstart package was pulled in? (Just to make sure /sbin/initctl is unmodified simply because there was no update)